<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>
<head>
  <meta name="generator" content=
  "HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 1 September 2005), see www.w3.org">

  <title>begin</title>
  <link href="../cppreference.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>

<body>
<table>
  <tr>
  <td>
  <div class="body-content">

  <div class="header-box">
    <a href="../index.html">cppreference.com</a> &gt; <a href=
    "index.html">C++ Vectors</a> &gt; <a href="begin.html">begin</a>
  </div>

  <div class="name-format">
    begin
  </div>

  <div class="syntax-name-format">
    Syntax:
  </div>
  <pre class="syntax-box">
  #include &lt;vector&gt;
  iterator begin();
  const_iterator begin() const;
</pre>

  <p>The function begin() returns an iterator to the first element of
  the vector, and runs in <a href= "../complexity.html">constant
  time</a>.</p>

  <p>For example, the following code uses begin() to initialize an
  iterator that is used to traverse the elements of a vector:</p>
  <pre class="example-code">
  vector&lt;string&gt; words;
  string str;
  
  while( cin &gt;&gt; str ) words.push_back(str);

  vector&lt;string&gt;::iterator iter;
  for( iter = words.begin(); iter != words.end(); iter++ ) {
    cout &lt;&lt; *iter &lt;&lt; endl;
  }
</pre>

  <p>When given this input:</p>
  <pre class="example-code">
  hey mickey you're so fine
</pre>

  <p>...the above code produces the following output:</p>
  <pre class="example-code">
  hey 
  mickey 
  you're 
  so 
  fine
</pre>



  <div class="related-name-format">
    Related topics:
  </div>

  <div class="related-content">
    <a href="vector_operators.html">[] operator</a><br>
    <a href="at.html">at</a><br>
    <a href="end.html">end</a><br>
    <a href="rbegin.html">rbegin</a><br>
    <a href="rend.html">rend</a>
  </div>
  </div>
  </td>
  


  </tr>
  </table>
</body></html>
